what current games are using DOOM 3 tech..like bump mapping and so on?

[sickdrummer]

i ask this cause i want to see if when doom 3 is relased will there be somthing similar to it in the tech area? like some of the games i have been looking at online that are coming out somtime this year are
Kreed
Breed
(funny they ryme)
but especially kreed,,,will doom look better cause of the tech it uses?

[Livo]

Far Cry is also using bump-mapping on low poly models of around 1500 that were scaled down from high polygon models which were about 250 000 polygons.

I think that STALKER: Oblivion Lost may be using bump-mapping as well though I'm not sure.

[EsH]

The old game "Gift" (I forget the company) uses completely dynamic shadowing over everything. It's pretty cool looking if your interested in that aspect, even if it doesn't use bumpmapping or anyhting, and even runs on my PII300. You can download the demo, I think.

The old game "Blade of Darkess" uses mostly uniform, dynamic shadowing-- but it uses geometrically projected shadows, which kind of puts a kink in some shadow interaction situations.

Both of these games have been out for a long while, so it just goes to show... (So when Carmack was saying that Doom3 is the first game where all the lighting is uniform across all surfaces, he probably meant for games at id)

Of course, "Malice" will be using bumpmapping and scenil shadows all over the place.

[Wobbo]

"Seed" no bumpamappin or shaders, but volume effects and lighting

UPDATE: Seed, Breed and Kreed all rhyme

[DesertEagle]

Halo used a nice bit here and there.
...but Halo 2 is takin' the bump-mapping and running faaar with it. Dang, it looks pretty... in a gaming mag I read, they showed before and after pictures of a Warthog going through bump-mapping. Before: The wheels looked like NASCAR racing tires. After: Friggin' off-road tires.
But believe me, more than just the friggin' tires changed. This game looks SWEET.

[Lord FlatHead]

The Tenebrae modification for Quake 1 adds stencil shadows, light shaders, specularity, bumpmapping and other graphical features from Doom III.

[Disorder]

Splinter Cell uses the realtime-shadow-thingie too.
Take a look at this: http://www.evilavatar.com/EA/News/Screenshots/M40767/13918.jpg

[EsH]

Interestingly, Splinter Cell seems to use shadow-mapping, which is the shadowing technique Carmack steered away from because of all the exceptional cases with point-lights, and generally crappy aliasing artifacts brought about by the use of stencil masks created by reletively low-resolution shadow textures.

You can see here, from the screen shots, both where Carmacks stencil shadows surpase the shadow-map method (in one screenshot, the marine casts a shadow that can only be described as his 8bit console twin), and where the shadow map method surpasses the stencil method (one screen shot depicts a fern plant created using transparency textures--each texture defined leaf, none-the-less, casts a shadow).

[Disorder]

Splinter Cell will be realeased earlier than Doom III.
This means Doom III won't be the first to show off this interesting new technology as most of us believed. Although EsH says there's a difference in both technologies, they pretty much look the same.
Can someone tell me what makes Doom III so much better than Splinter Cell? I don't really see the difference at all. Then again, I'm not such a techie.

[EsH]

Spliter Cell is (or seems to be) different from Doom3 in area of how shadows are generated for the stencil buffer.

Doom3 uses a geometric extrusion to create a sort of siloette mesh. Using this and some fancy stencil tricks, pixel resolution independant shadows are able to be generated. That is the key: the screen pixel resolution always matches the shadow resolution. In Doom3, when you move closer to a shadow, though the actual geometric shape of the shadow is angular, the actual strait "lines", if you will, outlining the shadow ALWAYS match the monitors pixel resolution. You won't see any "jagged" lines above what you'd normally see withthing else drawn to the screen. The dissadvantage is that (at least in Doom3) this all has to be done in software on the CPU. That means that polygon counts have to be kept reletively low, so that the CPU can calculate which edges are shadow edges and stuff.

Splinter cell uses a very different technique, I think. It takes the geometry that casts a shadow, and actually renders it onto a "shadow texture". This texture is then "projected" onto the shadowed objects in much the same way that Doom3's lights are projected. It all works using a fancy form of texture mapping (hence the name, shadow mapping).

Shadow mapping has the big advantage in that the geomtric complexity of the shadowing object is less important-- you can crank up the polys, basically, without fear of too much slowdown, unlike with Doom3. You can even have non-geometric things such as clouds and spite particles cast shadows-- it all works the same. The problem is that when you use this shadow texture, which is, say, 512x512 (and I'm being VERY generous here-- usually much much smaller textures have to be used), and project it outward like a flashlight, the size of one pixel of shadow map grows frighteningly quickly, so that when it finally hits a wall or somthing, all that wall could get is one pixel of it. One, big, ugly square pixel. No filtering, either, because of the stenciling. It really does look like a character is projecting it's 8bit SuperMario Bros. equavalent onto the world. It's just a problem of texture resolution, really. Unless the light casting the shadow is perfectly orthagonal (doesn't spread out like a flashlight or a pointlight), then the pixels of the shadow are going to be blown up the further they get from the light, with no filtering to sort of soften the edges. You can check some of the Splinter Cell screen shots on GameSpot-- you can see how "pixelized" they are.

I personally think Splinter Cell is using the conceptually superior method-- it's just that currently, the technology doesn't make it possible for it to be very effective in a visual sense. So, in terms of just making the best game possible right now, Carmack chose wisely, I think. In the end, though, I think everyones going to be using something like Splinter Cells method-- stencil volumes are messy...

[dsm]

Disorder said:

Splinter Cell uses the realtime-shadow-thingie too.
Take a look at this: http://www.evilavatar.com/EA/News/Screenshots/M40767/13918.jpg

A few things (like the lamps in the background) look terribly drawn and not as "photo-realistic" as in Doom 3 - that's what's different.

[Livo]

EsH- I've seen some of the Splinter Cell screenshots, and they do look a bit pixelized. You said that no filtering at all can be used to try and clean them up due to the stencils...would that include gourad shading and possibly some form of supersampling? (I know very little of the latter btw)

[EsH]

Hi, Livo. Basically, none of the methods you've mentioned will work, for various reasons. There ARE some shadow mapping methods that allow filtering of the cast shadow pixels, but the the drawback of those methods is that you generally don't get self shadowing. I think splinter cell is using another method. The problem is that a stencil shadow is either on or off. There isn't a gradient between the two extremes-- this is why people keep going on about how hard-edged Doom3's object-casting shadows are. One day, the hardware will be available to give us the best of both worlds...

[AirRaid]

nv50, here we come.

[Zoost]

Well, because there is nothing else to talk about... Doom III wise, here is another nice game with nice visuals

http://www.contrabandent.com/abducted/media.html

[EsH]

Zoost, that's extrodinary. All these games seem to be sneaking up on Doom3, at least graphics wise. Let's hope id hurries up, so that Doom3 will have the most "wow" factor possible...

[Disorder]

Zoost said:

Well, because there is nothing else to talk about... Doom III wise, here is another nice game with nice visuals

http://www.contrabandent.com/abducted/media.html

Nice, but too bad it all looks so shiny. Doom III's screenshots sometimes show a lot of shinyness too. Looks a little weird IMHO.

[Captain Red]

Deus Ex 2 will be using a particle light system similar to doom 3.

[PlayfulPuppy]

Ct_red_pants said:

Deus Ex 2 will be using a particle light system similar to doom 3.

'particle light'?

I think you mean volumetric lighting. :)

[Kinsie]

I remember reading in an interview with CroTeam that the next Serious Sam game will probably have the neato shading, similar to Quake 3, on every enemy, wile still keeping hundreds of foes on screen without too much framerate drop. CroTeam also joked about how Sam 3 would make John Carmack silent turn off his PC and weep into his nVidia coffee mug. We'll see.